SOURCE: "Blood and Grace: The Fiction of Cormac McCarthy," in Commonweal, November 4, 1994, pp. 11-16.

In the following essay, Arnold provides an overview of McCarthy's works, discussing how the novels address the issues of contemporary society. Focusing on the religious themes of the works, Arnold examines McCarthy's sensibilities and the deeper messages within the novels.

Cormac McCarthy's novels compose an extended journey. His characters travel the mountain roads and forests of east Tennessee, the city streets of Knoxville, the deserts and hills of Mexico and the Southwest. For the most part, their wanderings seem without immediate purpose, or purpose of the vaguest sort: an undefined desire to withdraw or to explore or to escape. They are descendants of Ishmael, both the biblical outcast and Melville's nomadic seagoer. I can think of no other author who so carefully charts his characters' movements from street to street or town to town...